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Larissa/History
The region of ancient Larissa, like today’s, spread in the northeastern part of the Thessalian plain, near the banks of river Penaeus (Pinios). The early history of the city is lost amid uncertain traditions of the area, while from one of the few testimonies of ancient sources and information deriving from the excavations, it may be deduced that the city must have had the same form of social and financial development with the rest cities of Thessaly. By the end of the 7th century BC, Larissa had both the financial and social leadership in Thessaly, playing a key role in the turbulent history of the region. In the 6th and 5th century BC it was the capital city of Pelasgia, which composed one of the four Thessalian tetrarchies and the head of the monetary union of the Thessalians. In the 4th century BC the Thessalian cities were formed in a state of federation having a politico-economic role, the so called “Community of the Thessalians” and had headquarters in Larissa. Herodotus himself implies that the ruling family of Larissa, the Alaudae, were sufficiently powerful that they could be called "kings of Thessaly". The Macedonian sovereignty in the city begins with the advent of Philip II in 357 BC and lasts until 197 BC when the king of Macedonia Philip V’ was defeated by the Roman Titus Quinctius Flaminius in the “Battle of Cynoscephalae”. Roman presence in the region of Thessaly dates back to very early, from the early years of 2nd century BC. Pre-history The name Larissa (Λάρισα Lárīsa) is in origin a Pelasgian (pre-Greek) word for "fortress". There were many ancient Greek cities with this name. Traces of Paleolithic human settlement have been recovered from the area, but it was peripheral to areas of advanced culture. The area around Larissa was extremely fruitful; it was agriculturally important and in antiquity was known for its horses. The name of Thessalian Larissa is first recorded in connection with the aristocratic Aleuadai family. It was also a polis (city-state). Classical Era Larissa was a polis (city-state) during the Classical Era. Larissa is thought to be where the famous Greek physician Hippocrates and the famous philosopher Gorgias of Leontini died. When Larissa ceased minting the federal coins it shared with other Thessalian towns and adopted its own coinage in the late 5th century BC, it chose local types for its coins. The obverse depicted the nymph of the local spring, Larissa, for whom the town was named; probably the choice was inspired by the famous coins of Kimon depicting the Syracusan nymph Arethusa. The reverse depicted a horse in various poses. The horse was an appropriate symbol of Thessaly, a land of plains, which was well known for its horses. Usually there is a male figure; he should perhaps be seen as the eponymous hero of the Thessalians, Thessalos, who is probably also to be identified on many of the earlier, federal coins of Thessaly. Larissa, sometimes written Larisa on ancient coins and inscriptions, is near the site of the Homeric Argissa. It appears in early times, when Thessaly was mainly governed by a few aristocratic families, as an important city under the rule of the Aleuadae, whose authority extended over the whole district of Pelasgiotis. This powerful family possessed for many generations before 369 BC the privilege of furnishing the tagus, the local term for the strategos of the combined Thessalian forces. The principal rivals of the Aleuadae were the Scopadae of Crannon, the remains of which are about 14 miles south west. Larissa was indeed the birthplace of Meno, who thus became, along with Xenophon and a few others, one of the generals leading several thousands Greeks from various places, in the ill-fated expedition of 401 (retold in Xenophon's Anabasis) meant to help Cyrus the Younger, son of Darius II, king of Persia, overthrow his elder brother Artaxerxes II and take over the throne of Persia (Meno is featured in Plato's dialogue bearing his name, in which Socrates uses the example of "the way to Larissa" to help explain Meno the difference between true opinion and science (Meno, 97a–c); this "way to Larissa" might well be on the part of Socrates an attempt to call to Meno's mind a "way home", understood as the way toward one's true and "eternal" home reached only at death, that each man is supposed to seek in his life). The constitution of the town was democratic, which explains why it sided with Athens in the Peloponnesian War. In the neighbourhood of Larissa was celebrated a festival which recalled the Roman Saturnalia, and at which the slaves were waited on by their masters. As the chief city of ancient Thessaly, Larissa was taken by the Thebans and later directly annexed by Philip II of Macedon in 344. It remained under Macedonian control afterwards, except for a brief period when Demetrius Poliorcetes captured it in 302 BC.